Posted
by
Soulskillon Monday March 22, 2010 @03:48PM
from the don't-anger-your-base dept.

King InuYasha writes "Nexuiz founder Lee Vermuelen, along with several other core developers, have licensed the Nexuiz name, Nexuiz.com domain, and DarkPlaces engine to Illfonic in a deal to get Nexuiz on consoles. However, the kink is that the engine has been licensed for non-GPL usage. That is, Illfonic has no intention of contributing their code back to the main GPL Nexuiz project. As a result, Nexuiz has been forked into a new project called Xonotic. While the main Nexuiz site doesn't mention that Illfonic has no intention of contributing back, the Xonotic project FAQ explains what's going on. Additionally, the Xonotic project states that Illfonic 'may be in violation of the GPL as most contributors to the Nexuiz codebase have not relicensed their work for inclusion in a closed-source project.'"

The people who contributed their code to Nexuiz under a Freedom license have every right to be pissed if their code is then sold off against their wishes. If the Nexuiz developers want to do so then stop stealing and re-write what isn't yours. The GPL isn't a charity to be exploited - it is a philosophy that says cooperation enriches everyone. If you don't agree with GPL code: DON'T USE IT and write your freaking own. Leaches.

If they got enough of the core developers on board who's to say they aren't rewriting the whatever sections of the code they don't have license to sell? Does it warrant looking into on behalf of the developers who aren't on board to make sure their code isn't getting used without them being compensated? Yes. But we shouldn't be jumping right to, "OMG they're stealing!" when they may not be.

Well, even just a rewrite won't be enough. They would need to re-engineer... Otherwise, it's just creating a derivative work (After all, if you have the exact same story, but with different character names, it's still plagiarism)... Either that, or use a blind coding technique (I look to see what code needs to be written based on what's there and describe the function to you. You then write your own code without ever looking at the original). But I'd venture to say the re-engineered work would be a lot

Well while I fully agree with you, I think there is way more GPL code out there in closed products. Waiting for the DMCA to be lifted so we can reverse engineer it and check it.
GPL/OSS is a system with one big flaw. It all depends on trust. And while this is very good in most cases it also means that there are parts of the world where the GPL has no legal value. There will be people using that really cool function and there will be companies that will build a businessmodel out of your hard work.
But... W

It really depends on who owns the license. If it is GPL'd by the contributor then it's within their rights to restrict usage. If on the other hand they signed ownership over to another copyright holder then it's not something one can fight really. They should have kept ownership and in turn their absolute control over the source. I might be wrong, IANAL. All I know is it depends on the owner, defined in the license. Assignment of ownership is, rightly, up to the owner.

But Mozilla "owns" the source code. They request contributions of code be signed over to them to be in the official tree... that way they can legally prove they "own" every line, and can adjust the license at will. Each contributor gets the choice UP FRONT to agree or not to sign off to Mozilla.

This is the same problem the Linux Kernel has moving from GPL2 to GPL3. Linus specifically didn't include an "or later version" clause, and some contributors are even DEAD. There's no way to change the license...

I've always viewed the GPL as democracy for software. It is an inclusive license not a divisive one. The restriction it does have against close-sourcing is there to preserve the, as you say, commons. Without preserving itself the GNU philosophy values of GPL code would be ripped off even more than now and incorporated into closed-source offerings without credit, recognition of ownership, or the Freedom to cooperate. Closed-source offerings that steal GPL code don't often recognize the irony that they ar

So it's not free unless you can close it off making it nonfree?
They are totally free to change the license on the part that they wrote to anything they want. They don't have the right to make other peoples code closed. This isn't really a freedom issue.....it's a ripoff issue.

If you wanted true freedom you shouldn't've used code licensed under the GPL. The GPL's interpretation of "freedom" is freedom for EVERYONE, not just for YOU. So while you have free use of the code in question, everyone else has free use of any changes you may make to it. The idea is that if we leave it up to peoples' good wills to ensure freedom, we'll all live in slavery, so we'll legally force everyone to let everyone else be free. Seems to be working out OK.

One different than the one I do. Because your freedom seems to come with restrictions.

Freedom always comes with restrictions if it is just and equal, because your freedom to do something often implies a restriction or cost for me. The GPL ensures that all the contributors have a common set of freedoms, but those translate into restrictions as well.

The Apache and BSD licenses ensure that all the contributors have a different set of freedoms, and a different set of limitations placed on them.

One different than the one I do. Because your freedom seems to come with restrictions.

Freedom always comes with restrictions if it is just and equal, because your freedom to do something often implies a restriction or cost for me. The GPL ensures that all the contributors have a common set of freedoms, but those translate into restrictions as well.

The Apache and BSD licenses ensure that all the contributors have a different set of freedoms, and a different set of limitations placed on them.

Explain. All people involved in an Apache or BSD licensed project have the same rights and freedoms.

Explain. All people involved in an Apache or BSD licensed project have the same rights and freedoms.

Oh, come on, does one have to be completely unambiguous here? Are you just not using context when you're reading at all? Let me try to clarify:

The Apache and BSD licenses ensure that all the contributors have a different set of freedoms [from those freedoms ensured by the GPL], and a different set of limitations placed on them [different from those limitations placed on them by the GPL].

To be completely free is to be a slave to one's own temptations. Likewise, to protect the freedom of the community, restrictions are voluntarily accepted by participants. Similar to how you may want to stab people, but get together with a bunch of other people and make it illegal since you don't want to get stabbed.

That said, I personally wouldn't use the term "free" to describe the GPL. It seems to me more like a self-interested unit for the benefit of its members. If you work at a for-profit, you can gene

All freedom comes with one crucial restriction: you cannot use your freedom to take away someone else's.

Ironic, isn't it? But not invalid.

In the specific case of the GPL, it grants everyone the freedom to copy the modify the software, so long as you do it in such a way that it doesn't take away someone else's right to do the same. The BSD license however, gives you the ability to copy and modify the software, and the ability to forbid someone else from doing the same thing. Is that more free or less free

Technically, that's true. *I* do not have *complete* freedom unless I can do anything I wish, including holding slaves.

But I accept certain restrictions on my freedom in order to maintain freedom for others; this is part of the social contract. What this argument boils down to is what level of restrictions we'll accept in order to maintain a common baseline threshold of freedom for each individual.

It seems parent to your post believes restriction of individual freedom, even if it serves to preserve indi

You are confusing freedom and sovereignty, as no doubt are others in this discussion. Your sovereignty is reduced if any action is not available to you. Sovereignty is a one-to-many relationship, freedom is maximized to the extent that all persons are free and that persons are not allowed to act as sovereigns over the rest. Thus, law providing fairness, for example the sharing implemented in the GPL, both increases freedom and limits a sovereign.

Not really. The only restriction is you can't make him nonfree. If I give you code and tell you it's free but must remain free...that's the GPL. If I give you code and tell you you can make it nonfree as long as you credit the people that wrote it...that's BSD.

"If I invite someone into my house I don't expect them to sell your stuff."

That's a terrible analogy. They are only selling copies and derivative works of my stuff.

Anyway, I was merely trying to point out how the poster used the term Freedom incorrectly. The rest of it isn't worth arguing really. The author of code has the right to dual-license it under the GPL. If they are changing the license on code they didn't write also, then it's a GPL violation and they'll have to stop. Because the GPL doesn't give y

We can argue about degrees of freeness, but the fact that there were debates about the use of drivers (wireless I think), from BSD into Linux, I think it is fair to say there are restrictions implied in BSD too.

Note, I think it is 100% fair to say that BSD is more free for the recipient than GPL.

We can argue about degrees of freeness, but the fact that there were debates about the use of drivers (wireless I think), from BSD into Linux, I think it is fair to say there are restrictions implied in BSD too.

Note, I think it is 100% fair to say that BSD is more free for the recipient than GPL.

Right, BSD licensing does not give the freedom to license BSD code under a different license just because you make modifications to it. No license allows that, so you can't really call it a restriction. You can license your own modifications under any license you like however, unlike the GPL.

I never understand this argument. People always talk of freedom without personal pronouns, which makes the argument moot. There's no such thing as 'freedom', there's only my, your, our freedom. The BSD protects someones freedom pretty damn totally, and the GPL protects everyones freedom at the cost of basically not allowing you to distribute binaries without source. Trying to compare these in 'freedomness' is moronic: it's literally comparing apples and oranges.

No, they do not. When someone takes code licensed under the BSD license and distributes it binary only, they limit everybody else's freedom to study, modify, enhance, and interoperate with that code. That is less freedom than under the GPL, not more.

If you want to be safe, don't use GPL license for your software, you're going to have to deal with a bunch of pains in the asses in the future if you ever want to do anything different from a license perspective.

But if you have copyright assignments from all contributors, it's still perfectly safe to use code in a non-GPL program because you own the copyright. FSF demands such "contributor agreements" because it sometimes revises the licensing policy for particular programs.

So here's what you probably meant: If you want to be safe, don't use GPL code written by others in software that you may want to take proprietary. Instead, make sure you either own the copyright or have a fairly permissive license (e.g. BSD,

The GPL has an anti-DRM provision which basically says "If you use GPL'd code for DRM, the DMCA doesn't apply to it." In other words, if DRM is developed under the GPL, said DRM may be legally worked around or bypassed.

IANAL. I have no idea if that particular provision actually has any legal force (and if it doesn't then the last sentence of the last paragraph is wrong).

It's a licensing restriction. And it's perfectly allowable and enforceable.

If you choose to use the code, you may use DRM in your binaries, so long as you abide by the other terms of the license- which includes not using the DMCA against efforts to reverse engineer and remove your DRM. If you choose to use the DMCA, you're NOT licensed to make derivative works or publish complete copies of the licensed work.

It's yet another item you agree to for the typical royalty "payment" required in these transactions

Do youself a favor and use a license for your code that actually does have an open spirit rather than a built in virus.

Exactly! If this project had only been BSD licensed, the developer could have just walked away with the code and never contributed anything back. Or heck - anyone could. Businesses should take note. Develop with BSD licenses so your competitors get your work for free! That's obviously the best way to do things and avoids all this "virus" GPL stuff.

Exactly! If this project had only been BSD licensed, the developer could have just walked away with the code and never contributed anything back. Or heck - anyone could. Businesses should take note. Develop with BSD licenses so your competitors get your work for free! That's obviously the best way to do things and avoids all this "virus" GPL stuff.

Yep, that is exactly true, and you're a dumbass for thinking thats a bad thing.

Do you realize that the IP stack in systems we use today are ALL based on BSD licen

Do you realize that the IP stack in systems we use today are ALL based on BSD licensed code? The fact that the Internet works as well as it does is because people could all use a common bit of code, in their own projects, without having to turn EVERYTHING ELSE over to the public.

Yes, and GNU realized that, which is why there is the LGPL and the GPL with linking exception. And many people who license some code under the GPL also license other code under BSD or Apache.

My code is GPL because I believe in stone-soup. I'm sitting before a Free operating system and eco-system of applications because enough people feel the same. As a philosophy, and not as a practical matter, I'm against my code being close-sourced. I want people to be able to change my code in ways I didn't imagine - not lock it up behind a profit motive. If someone does have a profit motive then let them choose whatever license suits them - and not use my code. I'm into Free software and the reason tho

If you want to be safe, don't use GPL license for your software, you're going to have to deal with a bunch of pains in the asses in the future if you ever want to do anything different from a license perspective.

If you want to be 'safe' in your limited definition, simply require that all contributions that you accept into the 'primary fork' that you maintain be accompanied by a copyrights assignment to you or your company so that you can legally re-license those contributio

Without John Carmack and LordHavoc (Darkplaces engine developer) giving permission, they're in a huge mess. I wonder if they are using anything slurped up from other Quake engine projects? Even if the submitter of the code signed off, doesn't matter if they aren't the original author.

Relicensing your code is fine, doing it to others... Well, people get in trouble with that with stolen commercial code as well as GPL. It's dishonest, no matter who it's done to, if it's not done with permission (either direct from all authors or through the terms of the license), they're opening themselves for a world of hurt. And destroying their reputation, as well.

If the only thing that is truly being closed up is the interpreted gamecode and they are developing new artwork, there's nothing to see here...

The engine has been licensed as non-GPL for Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, these are very closed platforms and the game had no chance of reaching them under GPL, publishers would not touch it.

IllFonic actively promotes the GPL Nexuiz for all operating systems.

The console game code is being started fresh now that GDC is over, no GPL claims can apply to it.

Note: Nexuiz 1.0 was to be a commercial game in the first place, but was GPLed for the enjoyment of everyone, this deal pertains to the name and concept, not the community enhancements that occurred after the original release.

The quake code is available in a non-gpl distributable format, so it is not unreasonable to assume they did this correctly in that regard. Was any of the community contributed code GPL'd? If they don't throw their own GPL tag on the code when they send it back, I don't think it gets covered by GPL automatically.

That is a good question, however, I would assume that it would be if the project itself is operating under the GPL, at least in the case of patches/changes to existing source code files. Since the only way for the user to have legal access to the source code to make the changes would require that person to agree to the GPL and this release their changes under the GPL, the "default" release for any said patch/change would thus be GPL, for anything else would mean they were in violation to even create the patch/change, as there was no non-GPL version for them to gain access to the source code before this change occurred.

This demonstrates an abuse of open source philosophy. It's an example of deliberately starting an open source project with no intention of keeping it open source: the intention is to milk the unpaid participation of others until the project reaches a certain critical mass - profitability - and then cordon it off. So here we have an open source project that isn't really, to go hand in hand with a "green revolution" that isn't really (because it's all just marketing)?

This demonstrates an abuse of open source philosophy. It's an example of deliberately starting an open source project with no intention of keeping it open source: the intention is to milk the unpaid participation of others until the project reaches a certain critical mass - profitability - and then cordon it off.

It really depends on how much community involvement there actually was. If it was 99% the work of the core team, and they have licenced properly upstream, then I say good luck to them. There's a bit of an absence of actual contributors complaining, as far as I can tell.

I take it your not a fan of the apache/BSD/APSL style licenses, because they are setup to explicitly allow exactly what you claim as "milking." Also note, this is 2 different companies Illfonic, who purchased the license never open sourced anything (at least related to the current article), they just purchased a license from Nexuiz. Nexuiz has not said anything about abandoning their open source work.This seams identical to what many opensource projects have done, from MySql to Apple and OS-x/Darwin. Wou

I happen to be altruistic enough to think that an entire economy could be based on open source, but only if *everyone* pays it forward. It would be like an open-ended barter system where everyone gives what they're best at, with the understanding that they'll receive in return later (or earlier) some of the things they're not themselves good at. A system of unilateral rather than mutual transactions, in other words. Of course it won't work if there's even one greedy rooster in the henhouse, so for now we

There are a lot of quake game engines, most of then have a single person behind. Behind DarkPlaces is Lord Havoc.

Lord Havoc plan to commit to the GPL DarkPlaces version all the features that are worth it. This excluse any SDK bit, since the PS3 SDK EULA don't able to share that part. This mean that even if Illfonic will not contribute, Lord Havoc will, and that is what is important.

Illfonic have a license to use the engine from Id Software. And a license from Lord Havoc. If theres part for other people, will be removed/replaced by Lord Havoc code. The result will be a fully legal and Illfonic licensed closed source version of DarkPlaces

The new version of Nexuiz for consoles seems awesome. This is only good news for Nexuiz, that will get more exposure, more code,...

We normally see the other route,... a closed source game (Quake engine from Quake) open source his engine. A open source game is created from a closed source game (FreeCiv from Civ ). This route is "new", a open source game spawns a closed source game.

There has ben some discussions on the forums, but It has been mostly about the use of the name. Is like how Firefox started as Phoenix so got renamed to Firebird... (only to be renamed again to Firefox!). But this time Illfonic let the community continue using the name.. . Of course, some people really dislike the very idea:-/. To this date, not contributor has claimed steal code or something like that.

Vermeulen is a hardworking individual, and has push this game (nexuiz) for more than 9 years now (And If you have work on a open source project, you know how hard is to get people moving forward). I have only good things to say about Lord Havoc and the very high quality of his code. He control all the code of DarkPlaces to be of the best quality possible, this mean rewriting things to get to his standard of quality. Is this rewriting all code that probably has made possible to closed-source the engine.

HOW?

1) You get the original source code from the Id Software FTP, and a license for it (probably legacy, since is not for sale now).2) You put all that code in the CVS. This code is the original, and you have a license for it.3) Lord Havoc commit all his code changes to this CVS. Since he own his own changes (he is the author of these changes) he can do it.4) The resulting code is both authored by Id Software and Lord Havoc.5) This code is licensed by Lord Havoc to Illphonic (Illphonic already have a license from Id Software).6) If theres some code from other authors, Illphonic acquire rights from these authors.7) TADA!... you have a closed source engine you can use to create games for XBox 360 and Playstation 3 (I suppose lots of changes are needed to achieve this compatibility, but you have the basics of the engine).

The authors of a work can "relicense" his work. This why Id Software can release the quake source engine as gpl AND a different license. Lord Havoc is the same as Id Software, so is doing the exact same thing, releasing his work on a different license.

It's definately possible to prove that ALL nonapproved contributor code was removed, but it's going to be EXTREMELY difficult (see the AT&T/BSD legal battle...). In theory possible, but I think this is going to wind up becoming a very interesting test of the GPL.

"This why Id Software can release the quake source engine as gpl AND a different license." - That's a MASSIVE difference, as the Quake source engine was developed as closed source and then later released as GPL - it's easy for iD to prove that

"Also, what's the history regarding licensing of the content (artwork, levels, models, etc)? - These are all clearly "new" developments that have little to no traceability back to the original iD release, since the original content of Quake was NOT covered in the GPL release. Have all content contributors approved this?"

I think nothing of the original art from Quake will be in use. Its very old art, low resolution stuff, 256 colors.. you don't really want to go there. I have read that are tryiing to license

I imagine version control would help to identify who contributed what piece of code.

Most version control systems I've used have a 'blame' command (some even have 'praise' as an alias;-) ) that will show you who contributed each line. Every line that isn't by an author who has agreed to the new license means you have work to do - either get the author's approval, or replace the code.

Mhm? There's an update up on the Nexuiz news page:
"There appears to still be some confusion over this change. I would like to make more things clear:
*Illfonic has obtained the rights to the Nexuiz's engine code, along with a license for the Quake1 engine. The engine has been licensed as non-GPL for Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, these are very closed platforms and the game had no chance of reaching them under GPL.
*The Nexuiz's engine's prime developer (LordHavoc) is currently working on the

As much as I love playing Nexiuz I can't really support this move. It's off my PC and will never return. I'm sure no-one really cares, but I do, and I guess that's what it's all about in the end - what I can live with.If PS3 is closed - then DON'T RELEASE TO IT...Back to BZFlag...

They're going through all of this work for nothing. Games of this style do not sell well anymore. It's a niche genre at best these days. It's not the late 90's or early 2000's.

Ask Epic how Unreal Tournament 3 did. People don't seem to want the arcade style Quake/UT shooters anymore. If they want to succeed they need to update other things besides the engine... The only non-realistic online shooter that has done well at all in the past few years is Team Fortress 2. Good luck competing with that.

Indeed. However, one wonders just what the price is for such licensing. A few years back it was still in the six figures for Q3:A. I'd say that we're probably talking 30-75k for what Illfonic would need to get signoff on from ZeniMax on the DarkPlaces pieces they've rights control over.

That's still quite a bit of scratch there- and it doesn't get into any of the rights for the contributors to the game engine. Each one would have to release/license rights accordingly to allow no GPL snags to exist for Il

Even if it was that, I'd love to see his signed off on license documents from iD that'd have allowed him to make Nexuiz a commercial game like is claimed on that post. If he didn't have them, he's NOT licensed to make a closed commercial game there with the codebase he's using.

How? It is just like if someone gave away popcorn for free and they are now charging them ten cents. They were the producers, they can change the licensing terms. Anyone is free to do what the GPL allows for the GPL'd licensed source but for the non-GPL'd you follow the proprietary license.

Other stories about this have stated that contributors to the engine had to assign copyright, in which case there might not be a problem.

Most of the files in the current head of their Subversion repository have an Id Software copyright notice. The company doing the PS3 game has a license from Id, so appears to have their bases covered on that front.

Ah, no it isn't. It's more like there is a group of people giving away popcorn because they believe it's important to give it away. Then a few people in the group make an arbitrary decision to start charging for the popcorn without the entire group's agreement.

If it had been a single developer who created the project and was the only one who had written any code then your analogy would be correct. It's not what has happened though.

How? It is just like if someone gave away popcorn for free and they are now charging them ten cents. They were the producers, they can change the licensing terms. Anyone is free to do what the GPL allows for the GPL'd licensed source but for the non-GPL'd you follow the proprietary license.

Only for the code you own yourself. If others contributed, you have no right to relicense that part of the code - you need their agreement that you can do that.

Mozilla had the same problem when it switched to the tri-license: some parts were not covered by the NPL, only the MPL, and the project leaders had to track down all contributors or rewrite affected modules.

Why would id sue Illfonic when Illfonic obtained a license to the Quake1 engine?

Illfonic has obtained the rights to the Nexuiz's engine code, along with a license for the Quake1 engine. The engine has been licensed as non-GPL for Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, these are very closed platforms and the game had no chance of reaching them under GPL.

Illfonic has obtained the rights to the Nexuiz's engine code, along with a license for the Quake1 engine. The engine has been licensed as non-GPL for Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360, these are very closed platforms and the game had no chance of reaching them under GPL.

As far as the copyrights go, it's simple: unless the original author of a bit of code transferred (or was require to transfer) the copyright to the project, the original author continues to hold the copyright. GPL has nothing to do with it, that's the rules of copyright law. Consensus also has nothing to do with it, it's a decision solely in the hands of the copyright holder whether to transfer their copyright or not. So unless the Nexuiz project required copyright transfer and refused to accept contributio